Cars, Tow Truck and Minivans, Oh My!

"Adventures make one late for dinner."  So says Bilbo Baggins in The Hobbit.  Indeed, it's true.

There are worse places for a car to break down!

 For the second Sunday in a row, we forayed out of Escazu, adventure bound.   Last Sunday, we rumbled up a pock-marked dirt road, heading to a trailhead for a hike.   After a long, steep, bumpy ride, we pulled off the road to notice our car was leaking transmission fluid!   We forwent the hike, rolled the car back down the hill, until a friendly drunk pointed us in the direction of a mechanic.  Steve knocked on his door, and when he finally appeared in his boxers and t-shirt, he spent a few minutes under the car tightening some hoses and pronounced us fixed!     

View from the tow truck

We did end up on a separate, shorter hike, that same day and had the good fortune to run into a local hiking club that meets every Sunday:

Caminatss Ecologicas  https://www.facebook.com/caminatasecologicas.alajuelitaescazu/about  
You can hook up with them on Facebook!  

Those 20 hikers  were headed down from their excursion with a three person police escort, and they warned us not to go any further in our small group as there could be muggers on the trail!  We turned around, but hope to hike with that group soon.

Fresh Chubasco Strawberries

View from a Breakdown Sunday #1

This Sunday, we headed for Poas volcano but only got within spitting distance.  Twenty minutes away, we thought we had made a wrong turn, so Steve did a three-point turn.  The car would not shift into reverse, and we were stuck in the middle of the road, blocking the lane entirely.   Moving the car forward would have forced us to crash into a tree, so we stayed there and set up our wimpy reflective triangle. 

The owner of the nearby Chubasco Hotel, restaurant and organic strawberry farm helped us to arrange a tow, and gifted us with some lovely berries.   Two hours later we were headed home, strapped to the top of a tow truck, all four of us sitting seat-belted into our SUV for the bouncy ride!  Never in the U.S. of A!   

View from a Breakdown Sunday #2

Turns out, after the 90 minute tow all the way back to Escazu, there was very little wrong with our car that couldn't have been fixed with some better tightening of the transmission hoses the week before, and a bit of topping off of some fluids.  Ah well!  We haven't yet seen a volcano here, but we hope to soon.

The next morning, in order to get to school, we called the school's minivan, because our car was still in the shop.  On the way to pick us up, it got a flat tire!   What a weekend!   I missed half of my first period class, but I don't think any of my students actually noticed I was missing!